


Red Carpet Rundown

by burglebezzlement



Category: Take Two (TV 2018)
Genre: F/M, Post-Canon, Red Carpet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-07 10:39:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,188
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16406882
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/burglebezzlement/pseuds/burglebezzlement
Summary: After all the time Sam’s spent in the PI world, Eddie knows it’s only fair if he walks the red carpet with her at an awards show. It’s not the experience he expected.





	Red Carpet Rundown

**Author's Note:**

  * For [klutzy_girl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/klutzy_girl/gifts).



> Happy Trick or Treat!
> 
> I need to give credit to Genevieve Valentine’s [amazing red carpet breakdowns](https://www.genevievevalentine.com/category/red-carpet-rundown/) for pretty much everything I know about celebrity image management and the red carpet ecosystem. Any mistakes are mine alone. If you haven’t checked her red carpet blogging out, I highly recommend it.

After three weeks of hushed calls, late-night discussions, and visits from people with titles like “Brow Consultant,” Eddie’s not sure what to expect when Sam comes out of her dressing room.

A cloud of golden tulle, maybe. A black silk negligee cut down to there. A dead swam wrapped around Sam’s torso. Eddie watched Hot Suspect, but he never paid attention to the Hollywood side of things. The tabloids. The red carpets. He’s been happy ignoring everything that didn’t tie into one of his cases.

But he’s with Sam now, and that means everything changes.

“Are you ready?” Sam asks, from behind the door.

Eddie touches the bow tie of his tux. He already owned a tux, but this isn’t that tux. This is a new tux, perfectly tailored to his measurements, that appeared in his closet last week. He’s not sure how Sam’s team pulled that off. If he’s totally honest, he’s not sure he wants to know.

“As I’ll ever be,” he says.

She steps out from the doorway, strangely demure. Her dress is a deep green, cap sleeves and beading on the top and a straight, shimmering skirt in a fabric Eddie can’t name, and suddenly he realizes why his tux’s bow tie and cummerbund have a subtle green sheen. Her hair is pulled over one shoulder in loose waves, and she must be wearing makeup — she has to be — but Eddie couldn’t tell you what’s makeup and what’s Sam.

“You look incredible,” he says.

It’s true and it isn’t true. He’s seen Sam play a Goth club girl, a Southern socialite, an elderly Ukranian grandmother. He’s seen her play a cop and he’s seen her play an heiress.

He’s not sure if he’s ever seen her play Sam Swift before. 

One side of her mouth quirks up. “Yeah, not what I usually wear. Kinda the point.”

“Do you like it?” Eddie asks, suddenly wondering.

“Whether I like it doesn’t matter,” Sam says, taking his arm. She’s carrying a tiny purse, one that might be able to fit her cell phone and a pack of breath strips. “My team did an amazing job.”

“Shouldn’t you liking it be the important part?”

“It’s like I’m a crime scene,” Sam says, as Eddie helps her into the waiting limo outside.

He doesn’t say anything, but he can tell she can read his face. 

“Not like that,” she says. “It’s not just me. Everyone who walks the red carpet — there’s all these clues, and the press and the agencies and the casting directors, they’re going to put them together.” She smooths a hand down the already-flat skirt of her dress. “So we have to make sure they see the right clues. Samantha Swift, fully reformed, ready to work again.”

The limo pulls away from the curb. Eddie’s half-listening as Sam explains the rest of the work that went into this look — the green, the color of rebirth. The structure of the dress and the one-shoulder hair, which Sam says “echo classic noir silhouettes” and remind the press that she’s been working, been staying in one place.

“The red carpet is part of the job,” she says, smoothing down her skirt again. “Like stakeouts — do you really like stakeouts? But it’s part of what you do, so you get through it, and then you can get to the good parts.”

Eddie does like stakeouts. A Thermos of coffee, the game on the radio — there’s some part of him that enjoys it. The simplicity of doing one thing, watching one place, watching one person, and knowing that you just have to have patience to wait them out. To get to the next part of the story. But he understands what Sam’s saying. He knows the stardom part of being a star was never what she wanted. It was always about the acting.

“You wouldn’t have to do this,” Eddie says, as their limo joins a long line of other limos idling their way towards the venue. “If you hadn’t turned down that role to get me out of Judge Chambers’ frame job.”

“Stop,” Sam says. She takes Eddie’s hand. “Don’t you dare question that.” She holds on tight. “Acting — I love acting, but it’s a job. You’re more important. I don’t regret anything.”

Eddie wants to kiss her, but he saw how many people it took to put her together. He settles for kissing her on the head instead.

“So what clue am I?” he asks.

“What?” Sam looks up at him. 

“In this picture of yours,” he says. He puts an arm around her shoulders and pulls her closer to him. “I’m an accessory too, right? What clue am I?”

Sam laughs, surprising him. “The team didn’t want you,” she says. “I did.”

And then they’re arriving, and Eddie’s getting out of the limo to help Sam out. It’s crowded — he doesn’t know why he expected it not to be, but it is. There’s an assistant who adjusts Sam’s dress and his bow tie, and then they’re walking down a red carpet in the California sunshine, while flashbulbs pop from the crowd of reporters and press. Sam’s in work mode, pivoting on one heel, facing eight cameras at once and somehow posing to all of them.

She might hate it, Eddie thinks, but she’s good at it. Damn good.

He’s never realized before, how much work goes into this. He trails her down the carpet, stepping back to allow her solo shots, before Sam takes his hand. 

Eddie doesn’t pose. He wouldn’t know how — he’s used to getting other people in his camera sights. He just looks at Sam, his Sam, with her understated makeup and her understated dress, and sees the Sam she is inside. The bundle of energy, the sunlight, the person who dug down into his defenses and camped out until he let her in.

The Sam he loves.

He smiles, just for her, and she ignores the cameras and smiles back.

* * *

“So why didn’t your team want me as an accessory?” Eddie asks, the next morning.

They’re tangled together in bed. Sam’s makeup is long gone, her careful hairstyle destroyed. Her hair’s sticking up on one side from where she slept on it.

She’s on her phone, flipping between features on the event the night before. Most of them have a photograph of the two of them together. A photograph he can already tell he’s going to be hearing about from Berto and Zeus. In the picture, he and Sam are standing apart, hands linked, smiling at one another like there’s nothing else in the world.

He looks stupid, he thinks. Besotted. 

Maybe the camera doesn’t lie.

“They thought having you there might risk overshadowing the narrative of my recovery,” Sam says, opening another article. SAM SWIFT’S NEW PI BEAU, the headline says, above another photo of the two of them together.

Eddie kisses her head, and then pulls her in to him, taking the phone and putting it on the bedside table. She doesn’t have makeup to mess up now.

“Regret bringing me?” he asks, his voice rough.

Sam smiles down at him. “Never.”


End file.
